Boulder Peaking

Every year when I am crafting my race calendar, it's hard not to include the Boulder Peak Triathlon.  It's a great hometown tradition, Olympic distance(1500m swim, 40K bike and 10K run).  This year I competed for the 7th time.  Today I pulled up my finish times since I first raced it in 2003, and noted that with a finish time of 3:16:03 that year, I've improved my go at this course by at least 20 minutes in recent years.  Training with consistency and focus does seem to lead to improvement. :-)  Hmmm.

My slowest swim there was in 03 - a ridiculous 47:26 for 1500 meters, and my best is 35:20, which was last year.  Still way slower than most of you triathletes and light years slower than you swimmers.  However, the days of those 47 minute swims for me often included multiple panic attacks, holding on to rescue watercraft and/or moments spent treading water while I tried to re-group and calm myself.  If you've had open water fear, I totally know where you're coming from.  My advice is to learn how to manage your head in the water, because chances are your body would be just fine if you could just calm the panic voices between your ears.  You gotta just keep putting yourself out there.  It does get easier if you just stick with it, promise. 

So a quick recap of the day yesterday, the 2013 Boulder Peak.  This was a "B" race for me, and I was out to have a good strong training day and see where I am with regard to training on the way to Ironman Canada Whistler in late August.  And a decent finish place in my age group would be nice too.

Swim:  new self-seeding rolling swim start means you place yourself in the starting group of swimmers who will be swimming about your same speed.  I thought I would like this, since for me when age groups start together regardless of their swim ability, it's always a matter of time before the next wave of swimmers catches up to me.  Often it's an age group with lots of male aggressive swimmers, who have no problem just swimming right over top of you or throwing you an elbow or a kick.  Not a fun scenario. So this swim start scenario was better, but it was quite congested the whole way, with swimmers who were both slower and faster than me.  Lots of them seemed to be swimming zigzag patterns, so hard to get a rhythm in the first half of the swim.  My swim time was about 30 seconds slower than last year, but I was feeling like I was swimming pretty smooth and strong and I was hoping that it would be faster.  Oh well - that's kind of my pattern...THINKING I'm swimming well but at the end the clock says "nay nay."

On my way up Old Stage hill

Bike: the dreaded climb up Old Stage hill is the trademark of Boulder Peak Triathlon.  It's a 600’ vertical climb in 2/3 of a mile, a 15% grade. Brutal.  I had only climbed it a few times this year, and was wishing a few days earlier than I'd done  it a couple more. Anyway, there was tons of support from friends lining the road going up, and that ALWAYS helps the effort.  Honestly, I'd much rather be climbing than descending, so the 35-40mph flying down the other side scares me a LOT more than the killer climb up.  Tried to do minimal braking on the way down, and really enjoyed the rest of the bike ride.  If you want to get an idea of what it's like to go up and over Old Stage hill on a bike, check out this video:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btLTxM0CZoc  

Run: my instructions from my coach Tim Reed were to try to negatively split the run.  Epic fail on this unfortunately.  First mile was 8:11, second mile was 8:20 and miles 3,4 and 5 must have been slower, based on my average mile split of 8:46.   I walked through a couple of aid stations so I lost some time there, but I do know that mile 6 was quicker again as I focused only on quick turnover and trying to keep my form as perfect as possible.  (if you've seen me run, you know my form is FAR from perfect, so perfect being a relative term.) At least it was something to think about to keep my mind off how uncomfortable I was.

Finish: Crossed the finish line with little left in the tank, but recovered and felt decent within a few minutes.  Headed straight from the finish line to the massage tent and got in line for some relief on my very sore glute area.  The massage guy spent a lot of time working on me and I felt much much better after the massage.  A massage every week would be the ultimate luxury!

Just like last year, I finished 4th in my age group, a minute and a half behind 3rd place, just off the podium.  The number 3 girl swam 3 & 1/2 minutes quicker than me, and I was 3 & 1/2 minutes quicker than her on the bike - so that would have put us even.  It came down to transition times and the run - all these times were close but this day I came up a little short.   

Lessons learned: 

1. Every minute, every second counts especially in shorter races such as this.
2. My bike to run transition is pretty good, but swim to bike transition is really pretty lousy.  Much room for improvement there and of course it's the easiest way to improve your finish time.  
3. Boulder Peak would have been NOT wetsuit legal had it been held one day earlier.  A storm moving through the night before cooled the water down just enough to make the wetsuit cutoff, so that they were allowed.  Since my one and only triathlon where I did not wear a wetsuit was in warm comfy salt water where I was very boyant, I need to be solidly mentally prepared for the possibility of swimming "naked" (that is, without a wetsuit) at my next race, Boulder 70.3 - and at every race, really.  I've been awfully lucky with this so far, but it's inevitable.

Thanks for reading!